Television personality (and Smith County, Texas sheriff from 1976-2012!) JB Smith hosts this short pinball film, shot at the 2013 Texas Pinball Festival. The piece, which includes interview snippets with Stern’s George Gomez and others, was originally broadcast on East Texas’ CBS 19 (KYTX).

There’s some beautiful pinball footage here, even better than JB’s haircut if you can believe that, so don’t feel bashful about taking a look!

This morning on my way to work, I listened to the new episode of the Arcade Repair Tips Podcast. Normally this podcast deals with specific questions that listeners have with their video arcade machines, but this particular episode is all pinball!

The hosts and their guest get right into it, talking about the machines they all played earlier at the show, including Wizard of Oz (Jersey Jack, 2013?), The Avengers (Stern, 2012), and others, and offer their personal reviews. Then they talk about the presentations by George Gomez, “Jersey” Jack Guarnieri (via Skype), and Steve Ritchie.

Jessica Murphey of Medill Reports presents an article and short video documentary on Stern Pinball. Owner Gary Stern continues to propagate that Stern is the sole pinball maker. Although I admire his dedication to pinball, at some point he’s got to present a more honest outlook of the industry and credit the smaller pinball companies that are helping to make the public more aware of pinball. Or maybe he never will. He’s old school.

Designer George Gomez also provides some sound bytes, and as always, he’s got a slightly different and refreshing way of looking at pinball.

Just over a week ago, George Gomez, Vice President of Game Development at Stern Pinball, was interviewed by Turi Ryder on WGN Radio 720 AM, Chicago, Illinois. The cool thing about this “general public” audience interview is that the host is actually a pinball fan and knows a little bit about pinball.

The interview touches on home game ownership vs. location sales, pinball artwork (including breasts!), Playboy, Stern tours, The Avengers launch party which was the following night at the Emporium Arcade Bar in Chicago.

The interview took a turn when host Turi announced that she had Jack Weinberg, grandson of Gottlieb founder David Gottlieb on the line. I’m not sure if George was caught off guard, but Jack basically went into a history of pinball including Gottlieb’s invention of the flipper with George kind of nodding along, saying, “Right. Yup. Mmm hmm.” When George finally got a chance to continue, he was able to tout Stern’s own pinball history.